Globally, the number of children dying before they reached their fifth birthday declined from 12.4 million (1990) to 8.1 million (2009). This means that, in 2009, 12,000 fewer children died each day than in 1990.

The number of women dying due to complications during pregnancy and childbirth has decreased by 34 per cent between 1990 and 2008, from an estimated 546,000 to 358,000.

Access to HIV treatment in low- and middle-income countries increased ten-fold over a span of just five years.

The proportion of children sleeping under insecticide-treated bed nets to prevent malaria rose from just 2 per cent in 2000 to 22 per cent in 2008 in 26 African countries.

Some 1.7 billion people have gained access to safe drinking water since 1990.

An estimated 5 billion people worldwide were using mobile phones in 2010, according to the International Telecommunication Union, with the strongest growth in developing regions.

Cause for concern:

A child in Dhaka’s Karial slum, Bangladesh.

About 1.4 billion people – or one quarter of the population of the developing world – live in extreme poverty, on less than $1.25 a day.

Some 925 million people in the world go hungry every day, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN — down from 1.023 billion in 2009, but still more than the number of undernourished people in 1990 (about 815 million).

Every six seconds a child dies of hunger somewhere, according to the World Food Programme.

Almost 70 million school-age children are not in school.

The share of women employed outside of agriculture remains as low as 20 per cent in some developing regions (Southern Asia, Middle East and North Africa).

About 358,000 women died from complications of pregnancy or child birth in 2008, 99 per cent of them in developing countries.

In sub-Saharan Africa, a woman’s risk of dying from complications of pregnancy and childbirth over the course of her life is 1 in 31, compared to only 1 in 4,300 in the developed regions.

Every day over 7,400 people are infected with HIV and 5,500 die from AIDS- related illnesses.

Malaria kills a child in the world every 45 seconds, with 90 per cent of deaths occurring in Africa.

About 884 million people worldwide still do not have access to safe drinking water.

About half of the population in the developing world – 2.6 billion people – don’t have access to improved sanitation facilities, such as toilets or latrines.

Some 828 million people are living in slums.

Nearly 17,000 plant and animal species are at risk of extinction.

Official development assistance stands at 0.31 per cent of the combined national income of developed countries, still far short of the 0.7 per cent UN target. Only five donor countries have reached or exceeded the target.

Only 1 in 6 people in the developing world have access to the Internet.